Vindicated
by badpirate
Summary: (Megas XLR - based on RVMMpts12) Every sinner has the chance to repent.


Vindicated **Title** _Vindicated_   
**Author** Musachan   
**Series** _Megas XLR_   
**Genre** Alternate universe, angst   
**Notes** Based on the _Megas XLR_ episodes, **Rearview Mirror Mirror, parts one and two**. Do _not_ try to understand this piece without first having seen these episodes. 

_I am vindicated   
I am selfish, I am wrong   
I am right, I swear I'm right, swear I knew it all along   
And I am flawed   
But I am cleaning up so well   
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself_   
- **Vindicated**, Dashboard Confessionals 

**vindicated**

"This has to stop." 

He raised his head, ever so slightly, only half interested in what his friend had to say. A smile formed upon his lips, an angry, dangerous smile. A dark, daring smirk, begging for his friend to continue -- tempting him to go on with what he had to say. It was not an offer that would be greeted warmly -- it was a threat. If he were to continue, what would become of this smile? Would it fade away, or would it break apart? 

It scared him -- of course it did, how could it not? But no matter how frightening this foreign smile was, he could not ignore his conscience. He had seen the world fall apart at his feet, with those venomous lips to blame. 

"Yes, Jamie?" 

The voice penetrated the room -- a familiar, and yet out of place voice. Hadn't that voice been heard before? Hadn't it laughed, hadn't it sang? 

But for the moment, it was angered, threatening. The familiar voice, laced with malice. It pierced through the room with superiority, with confidence. 

Jamie crossed his arms over his scrawny chest casually, as he glanced away. How could he look upon the shell of his friends? This was not Coop. She was not Kiva. These strangers -- that villain -- were no longer the people he knew. And quite honestly, Coop frightened him. He frightened him more than any monster, more than any drooling pair of fangs, more than any murderous alien. 

"This has to stop," Jamie repeated, quieter this time, timid almost. Internally, he cursed himself for allowing Coop to intimidate him. 

But hadn't that been how this all began? 

"This has to stop?" Coop repeatedly mockingly as he twirled a screwdriver in his fingers, smoothly, gracefully. "This has to stop?" 

The blonde man, thinner now than Jamie had recalled from his youth, walked towards him, slowly, making sure that his every footstep echoed in the room, echoed just for the man who defied him. 

"This has to stop? Is that what you said?" asked the foreign smile. Jamie's eyes averted themselves, unintentionally, but their quick movement did not go unnoticed by either party. 

How many times had he tried to talk some sense into his friend? Hadn't he tried? 

Or was he to blame? He had tried, he had failed, but had he really tried at all? Or did it always end the same? Jamie's mind ran through the past five years like a movie, on rewind -- no words, no voices. The run of actions, the explosions, the malice, the first time that horizontal venom appeared on Coop's once amiable features. 

"Yes," Jamie replied, lifelessly, genuinely frightened for his life -- Coop had killed greater men for less. "This ... has to stop." 

"This has to stop, he says," Coop laughed mockingly. A blur of motion, what Jamie only recognized briefly as Coop's right fist, ran past his face, leaving the pain behind as the skinny young man tumbled backwards before righting himself. 

"This has to stop!" Coop laughed genuinely, full of venomous hatred. "This has to stop! As if you could stop me!" 

Coop turned around, grinning widely. "As if he could stop me." 

She looked down at the concrete floor of his garage, blankly. Her once vibrant green eyes replaced by the color of dying grass. She said not a word, she only stared at the floor, trying to calm her breathing. She wanted to be invisible, she wanted the earth to crush her, the stars to make her disappear, anything. She wanted to escape for just a moment. So she stared, trying to be invisible. 

But how could she be? Even lifeless, she was beautiful. 

Even lifeless, she was loved. 

Coop glanced back at Jamie, who stood, glaring at his once friend. 

"I mean it, Coop. You can't keep doing this. You used to have a purpose -- you used to do what was _right_!" Jamie shouted, as his body ached, remembering the good times. The pain wasn't a physical one, per se -- it was mental. It began at his head and pounded through his skull, through his neck, past his chest, until every crevice of Jamie ached with the memories of what was once good and true. 

"But wasn't that boring, Jamie?" Coop asked coldly, his back turned towards his friend. Jamie looked down at the ground, his eyes captivated by a dried up puddle of motor oil -- or perhaps it was blood, blood that had dripped from the hands of Megas, from the hands of Coop. 

"It's more fun this way, Jamie. It's more fun, you said so yourself," Coop reminded him, his voice rough and mocking. Without even looking at him, Jamie could sense his expression -- he could sense those eyes, glaring down at him, mocking him. 

"It's _wrong_," Jamie said feebly. "It's wrong ... I don't want this." 

He looked up, away from the dried up puddle of blood. "I don't want this anymore. I can't do this ... I can't let you do this." 

"As if you could stop me," Coop smirked calmly. "As if you ..." 

"I _will_ stop you," Jamie said confidently, his voice solid and strong, as every organ inside him screamed in pain, agony, twisting and turning, writhing in pain. 

Coop was silent for a moment, lacking an immediate response towards Jamie's insolence. But a pause later, a brief few seconds of thought, Coop smiled thinly. 

"As if you're not to blame," he said coyly, turning around. No longer was he smiling -- no longer did this game amuse him. "As if you're an _innocent_ in all of this, right, Jamie?" 

Jamie glared quietly at Coop -- no, through Coop, past the face of his once friend, and upon the features of the young woman who rested upon the hood of Coop's car. She did not respond, she did not frown, her eyes did not move. Like a doll, she sat lifelessly, unable to respond. 

"I may not be an innocent ... but even a sinner can repent," Jamie smirked. "I will stop you, Coop. I will and you'll just watch, alone." 

"Alone, you say?" Coop growled. He turned his head sharply, and glared at Kiva. 

"You wouldn't leave me, would you, Kiva?" 

Kiva twitched visibly, her whole stiff body a jolt of sudden, subtle movement, before she froze again, silent, unbreathing. Why couldn't she be invisible? 

Jamie felt sympathy for her -- how could he not? Ever since this began, she was the innocent. He was a sinner, but she had remained a pawn in Coop's game. She was his tool, she was innocent of whatever crimes Coop and Jamie had committed. 

"You wouldn't leave, Kiva?" Coop asked again, forcefully, his voice filling up the small, cramped garage. 

Kiva didn't respond immediately, but slowly, she shook her head, to agree with Coop, if only to get herself out of the picture. She did not want to exist -- she merely wanted to disappear, to escape. 

"Kiva!" Jamie shouted instinctively. "You can't!" 

She looked up at him, her expression torn. The sorrow, the suffering -- had he put her through this? Had it been Coop? The innocent are those that suffer the most. Truly, her once beautiful green eyes stared at Jamie, through him, unable to make a solid contact with his being. The eyes of a stranger. 

"Jamie I ... I have to get to the future I ... I can't just ..." she trailed off quietly, the words drifting away like smoke, as if they had never been spoken at all. 

Coop grinned maliciously. "You're _nothing_ to her, Jamie." 

"That's not true ..." he replied, only half sure of himself, so unsure that Coop could hear his uncertainty in his voice. "That's not true!" 

"Go on Kiva ... tell him. Tell him what he is!" Coop shouted, threateningly, a morbid twist of a smile upon his features, a glare of daggers emanating from his eyes. Hatred seethed through his words -- the anger, the passion, it flooded his tone, it corrupted every letter of every word, until each breath dripped with poison. 

She looked down at her hands quietly, perhaps afraid, perhaps merely broken. "Nothing ..." 

Hadn't it been a lie? Surely, at this point, Jamie was more than nothing to her -- surely he was a _something_. 

How could he be nothing to her when she was his everything? 

"So that's how it is," Jamie said quietly, darkly. "So that's how it will be." 

Kiva closed her eyes tightly, wishing that she could disappear, wishing to take Jamie with her to whatever dark crevice of the universe God would send her pitied soul. If only she would disappear, if only she could take him. 

Her body sat, unmoved, like a trophy, like an unopened gift, but inside her stomach twisted, writhed, with pain, with sadness. She had been strong once, but she was blinded now -- no matter how much she loved him, there was a future she need to get to. She needed to return home. 

Why did she need to return home? Hadn't this world become her home? But Coop said he would aide her in her return to the future ... surely, she could not abandon the future, the future that needed her. 

Blindly, she followed him. 

Jamie shook his head, to brush the hair from his eyes, to hide his sorrowful black orbs. 

"This is how it will be, then." 

He walked forward, forcing his body, quaking with fear, with longing, to stiffen as he walked. An illusion of confidence in every echo of every step. Coop watched silently as his once friend walked by him. 

"I will stop you, Coop. Mark my words," Jamie said viciously. "I swear to it." 

Without a word, without a sound, Coop's hand darted for Jamie's neck, crushing it momentarily. The blonde man took the screwdriver in his spare hand and smirked darkly, hatred flooded his features. 

With a low chuckle, he took the screwdriver's end, and dug it into Jamie's flesh, coaxing out a scream, a whimper. But Jamie remained silent as his throat closed in beneath Coop's fingers, as his flesh was torn across his left cheek. Coop, displeased with Jamie's silence, cut into Jamie's face once more, dipping into his cheek, starting high, going low, then moving up again. The blood dripped from his once friend's face freely, but he stared silently at Coop. 

The blood formed a puddle at their feet, a small one, that steadily outreached beyond their shoes, engulfing the dried puddle of blood until it could no longer be seen. 

"I will defeat you, Coop," Jamie said coldly, eyes narrowed. 

"Doesn't it hurt?" Coop asked mockingly. 

Jamie's eyes glanced over at Kiva's still form, as she merely stared at the puddle on the floor. Her dead green eyes refused to life themselves towards Jamie's pained form -- no matter how much she hurt inside for him, she was dead on the outside, and this death slowly killed her on the inside. Soon, she would not love him -- soon, she wouldn't be able to. 

He averted his eyes back to Coop's own hazel orbs, and he smiled, bitterly, sorrowfully. 

"Not as much as you may think." 

With those final words, Jamie walked out, screaming inside, silent on the outside. The sins he had committed alongside Coop had slowly started to kill him on the inside, but today, the venom from his sins flowed freely from his body, cleansing. For now, he was clean. For now, he was innocent -- he was vindicated. 

**The End**

**Note: I suppose you could say this is OOC, but I feel that it's really ... not. Especially concerning Kiva. I figure, there _must_ be a reason she became a cyborg, and I don't think it was because she decided to. If she dies, even if it is only mentally, Coop would have to rebuild her in someway, to keep her under his control. What better way that to make her part machine? That way, she's forever loyal. **

I hope you enjoyed my romp of AUness 

- Musachan 


End file.
